Although the men’s basketball roster is now bereft of sophomores, the seven members of the class of 2014 still face an uphill battle for playing time.
The crowded roster currently boasts 11 upperclassmen, including seven players who have logged more than 20 minutes per game in at least one season.
While available minutes appear to be scarce, coach Jerome Allen indicated that at least a few freshmen will get significant playing time on a team that finished with a 6-22 record last year.
“A couple of them will have the opportunity to contribute right away,” Allen said. “For some of them, it’s a learning process.”
One of the freshmen likely to make an immediate impact is heralded guard Miles Cartwright, but as of last week, Allen had not informed the freshmen of the expected rotation.
Similarly, Dau Jok, who is by his own admission still learning and adapting to the team’s system, said he isn’t concerned about minutes because even the players on the bench have a chance to contribute in their own way.
“If you’re part of the second team and you’re going up [in practice] against Tyler [Bernardini] or Rob [Belcore] or somebody, you have to push them. That’s the second team’s job: to get guys ready for the games,” Jok said. “You can’t worry about playing time at all because if you do, you get caught up in that, and things go down from there.”
Jok and his fellow newcomers are well aware that they must utilize practice time in order to gain experience in the big show.
Guard/forward Marin Kukoc said that Allen is “a fair guy,” so he expects to get opportunities commensurate with his effort and production in practice, as well as based on matchups against particular opponents.
And freshman guard Casey James, who said that he hopes to see action in some early-season games, also stressed the importance of impressing the coaches in practice in order to break into the rotation.
“Pretty much every day you have to prove yourself and not take any days off,” James said. “And you gotta go at the seniors just as hard as they go at you.”
But the greatest chance for playing time may go to the duo of 6-foot-8 freshmen Cameron Gunter and Fran Dougherty. While senior Jack Eggleston has been a consistent fixture in the lineup throughout his career, fellow upperclassmen and frontcourt contributors Andreas Schreiber, Conor Turley, Mike Howlett and Larry Loughery all missed significant time last year due to injury and may face a challenge from the freshmen.
Regardless of the specific partitioning of playing time, Allen has been impressed thus far with a class initially recruited by former coach Glen Miller.
“I think, all in all, the group in general has done a tremendous job of just buying into the principles that we’re trying to hold on to,” Allen said. “I just think that, for the most part, it’s a solid group.”
